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Ceramic Artist and Educator, Sarah Riley, has been playing with clay and honing her craft since 2010. A hand builder in high school, a wheel thrower in college, and current 3D Art & Design teacher at The Field School, she combines the variety of techniques she’s collected over the last decade and infuses sculpture in her graduate work. Fascinated by both function and form, her work aims to maintain elements of the process and the potential of the fresh clay in the final, fired product. She alters freshly thrown forms to resemble the flexibility and forgiveness of the material and hold the spontaneity of that present moment at the time of creation. She uses the material to reflect the curves, undulations, and complexity of the human body, and the way that the figure can be distorted and abstracted by the narrative mind.
Sarah constantly challenges herself to experiment with new techniques, explore the elements of form and surface design, and push the material to its potential. Her wholehearted dedication to teaching and her hunger for learning also caused her to push her own physical body to its potential, and her own health challenges and autoimmune disease development led to her current body of work, where she explores the dynamic of the inner voice and the outer body by throwing and altering forms to create abstracted figures. Her pleasure in making these pieces is getting lost in their textures and she is energized by the challenge of preserving those moments of process in the final product. Sarah is constantly inspired by witnessing her students’ creative processes, by conversations with her community of family and friends, by textures found outdoors on her daily walks with her dog, and simply by the process of creating with wet clay.
Sarah graduated from Elon University in 2016 and moved to Washington, D.C. to pursue her career as a Ceramic Artist. She has taught workshops and supervised a ceramics studio in the mountains of western North Carolina, assisted artists at Haystack Mountain School and Penland School of Crafts, and worked as a professional ceramic artist in Washington, D.C. She currently teaches Middle School and High School Ceramics, Design Learning, and 3D Design at The Field School in D.C. and is pursuing her MFA at Hood College.
Sarah constantly challenges herself to experiment with new techniques, explore the elements of form and surface design, and push the material to its potential. Her wholehearted dedication to teaching and her hunger for learning also caused her to push her own physical body to its potential, and her own health challenges and autoimmune disease development led to her current body of work, where she explores the dynamic of the inner voice and the outer body by throwing and altering forms to create abstracted figures. Her pleasure in making these pieces is getting lost in their textures and she is energized by the challenge of preserving those moments of process in the final product. Sarah is constantly inspired by witnessing her students’ creative processes, by conversations with her community of family and friends, by textures found outdoors on her daily walks with her dog, and simply by the process of creating with wet clay.
Sarah graduated from Elon University in 2016 and moved to Washington, D.C. to pursue her career as a Ceramic Artist. She has taught workshops and supervised a ceramics studio in the mountains of western North Carolina, assisted artists at Haystack Mountain School and Penland School of Crafts, and worked as a professional ceramic artist in Washington, D.C. She currently teaches Middle School and High School Ceramics, Design Learning, and 3D Design at The Field School in D.C. and is pursuing her MFA at Hood College.
Instagram:
@sarahrileystudio
Email: sarahspaythriley@gmail.com
@sarahrileystudio
Email: sarahspaythriley@gmail.com